Recent Early Universe Cosmology Review - Funding Essay

[lasm2000]

I am currently writing a funding essay for a (taught) postgraduate degree and I'd rather have a refresher on modern cosmology. As such, is anyone around aware of a recent early universe review article in the arxiv? I am not keen on learning the "basic stuff", just a review article of what has been recently been done in early universe cosmology.

 

[Chalnoth]

This one is fairly recent:
http://arxiv.org/abs/1103.2271

Is this the sort of thing you were looking for?

 

[lasm2000]

Thanks. Yes, that kind of reviews. There has been some considerable activity since then, tho. For example, I recall some non minimal coupled Higgs driven inflation that was more or less popular not so long ago. Also the funky models with high production of tensor modes from the BICEPS2 rage from the past year (axion monodromy and the like).

 

[Chalnoth]

Thanks. Yes, that kind of reviews. There has been some considerable activity since then, tho. For example, I recall some non minimal coupled Higgs driven inflation that was more or less popular not so long ago. Also the funky models with high production of tensor modes from the BICEPS2 rage from the past year (axion monodromy and the like).

I'm not entirely sure if there's a good review that's more recent. I do know that good reviews only pop up once every few years or so, though.

But one small comment on BICEP2: the 2015 Planck results showed that it was an erroneous result due to incomplete foreground subtraction. There is currently no evidence of primordial B-modes.

 

[lasm2000]

Oh yes, I am aware of that. But thing is, I want to somehow show the comitee that I have some idea of what has been done in the past years. Which indeed, includes lots of misguided work after the BICEPS2 affaire but which clearly dominated the discussion past year.

 

[Chalnoth]

Unfortunately I'm really not sure that's available in any one, easily-summarized location. If your institution has a journal club, that's usually a great way to keep up on current research. If that journal club sends out e-mails that contain the papers discussed, you could search through that e-mail history and get a good list of papers to look at (assuming you're on the recipient list).

I don't know what your committee would be looking for, but I doubt they'd really care that much about you knowing much in the way of specific things that aren't directly impacting your specific research. If they are interested in you demonstrating some display of breadth, they'll probably let you direct that discussion to some degree.

If I might ask, is this for a qualifying oral exam?